Done with Eridani. Got us started with a decent pile of cash, enough solar armor that refueling shouldn't be necessary, and a solid upgrade to our other defenses. Picked the Sapphire since that's the one people seem to prefer.

Solar armor this early on, that comes in very handy.
Finished the third system. Ran into a repentant class gunship and nearly died, wtf?
Other than that just killed and looted stuff. Any reason we're carrying around a bunch of damaged weapons?

EDIT: The Slicer has fallen. …And he left a nice new toy for Ttech to play with. ^.^ Current loadout includes an optimized Arbalest, a Ballista, the PM6, a NAMI launcher with 200+ Stilettos, a cannon accelerator, a class V deflector, and a full set of blast plate.